by J. M. Lee
Kylan’s heart ached. A friendship with one of the Mystics, those that were as wise as the Skeksis were shrewd! Yet in all his ancient knowledge, Amri didn’t even know how lucky he was.
“I wish the Drenchen had a Mystic to teach us,” Naia said. She sounded more amazed than envious. “I can’t imagine what it would have been like if urVa had been a friend to our clan. Kylan! Perhaps you can learn from urLii. I’ll bet he knows so many songs that you’ve never heard!”
“Probably,” Kylan said, careful not to mumble. “If he can find the firca, that would be enough for me.”
urLii was not as decisive as urVa, and got lost more than once in the chambers. As they wandered from one to the next, Kylan kept waiting for Tavra to show up, asking what they were doing and why they were wasting time.
“Yes,” urLii said, planting both feet in front of a shelf that Kylan swore they’d already looked at twice. “It was here. Forked flute, crafted by Gyr from bones of the singing mountain-gong bird. Hmm . . .”
The Storyteller searched the shelves with all four long-fingered hands at once, picking up small chests and shifting things aside, looking and grumbling hmm, hmm the whole while. Amri tapped a finger on his chin.
“Are you sure it was here, urLii?” he asked. “Perhaps you’ve confused this shelf with another? They do all look the same.”
“No. It was here. I know it was. Right here, beside the Sifan Charms of Zale. Gyr the Song Teller was a Sifa, you know. I keep things very organized.”
Amri gave Kylan and Naia a look that said he doubted that, but urLii was convinced.
“Here was the sextant, some Nebrie hide, the charms, and then the forked flute. What do you call it? Firca. Right here.”
“Maybe you moved it,” Amri suggested gently. “Maybe it fell when you knocked over everything else in the other room. Let’s just look around. I’m sure it’s here somewhere.”
They divided their efforts once more, but this time kept to the same room. Kylan stayed near urLii, waiting for the courage to speak to the Mystic. They worked side by side while Amri joined Naia on the other end of the room. Kylan had questions, and he wanted to hear everything the Mystic had to share, but no matter how long he waited, the courage never came. He could not ask about Gyr, or the firca, or even whether the Mystic race knew their Skeksis counterparts had broken the Heart of Thra. Instead they looked in silence, Kylan’s lungs filling with dust as he uncovered dozens and dozens of shelves, finding nothing.
“It’s not here,” Naia said after a while. As usual, she said out loud what they were all thinking. They had been more thorough here than they had been in any other room. Despite his earlier disorientation, urLii did not hesitate before shaking his head.
“Oh, where, then?”
Tavra came in, finally making her appearance. She took one look at the Mystic standing over Kylan, simply nodding as if she had expected him to be there. In her hands, she held a small red wood box.
“It was in the room two chambers down.”
“Yes—oh yes,” exclaimed urLii. “That’s it, in the cedar box!”
Instead of presenting it to Amri, who could have been said to be the owner of the box on behalf of his clan that protected the Tomb, or to Naia, who had been their unofficial leader through everything, Tavra brought the box to Kylan. He accepted it in both hands.
“Here’s your firca, Song Teller,” she said.
Amri and Naia joined him, Naia grabbing his arm in excitement.
“Go on,” she said, “open it. Let’s see the firca you’ll use to help save our people.”
Kylan looked at the box. Etched in great detail on the lid was a drawing of a bird, standing next to a grove of trees to demonstrate its fantastical size. Its head was all beak with an eye on either side, wings half-spread over a clutch of boulder-size eggs. The only thing peculiar about the etching was a character burned into the corner of the drawing, the symbol for S. The etching still felt warm, but then again, everything in the stuffy chambers did.
The box was not locked, giving Kylan no excuse not to open it. He placed a shaking hand on the lid, imagining what would be inside. A tiny instrument so similar to the ones he had learned to play in Sami Thicket, but so different and so powerful. Perhaps the single item that could most quickly turn the tides on the Skeksis.
Kylan opened the box. At first, his heart leaped with happiness. Just as quickly, the relief and excitement plunged into disappointment and fear. He must have made a face, because Naia squeezed his arm in worry.
“What’s wrong?”
Kylan turned the box so all could see, unable to bring himself to describe it in words. Resting in the padded box was a collection of white fragments—bone, no doubt, and some still large enough to show intricate carvings. There were just enough pieces to know what it had been, and what it could never be again. All that mattered now was what it was: Gyr’s bell-bird firca, smashed into a thousand pieces.
CHAPTER 19
They had all breathed in and out many times before urLii finally spoke.
“Well . . . it wasn’t like that when I saw it last.”
Kylan felt his legs give out. He sat on the dusty floor and stared at the broken firca. Even if they had a way to mend it, the cracks would never be completely sealed. For a wind instrument, even a small splinter meant death. In the state that the flute was in, there was no telling how many little pieces were missing. He couldn’t bring himself to close the box, though staring at the remains wasn’t doing them any good.
“We . . . we’ll have to find another way,” Naia began. Then, to Tavra, “It was like that when you found it?”
“There was a picture of a bell-bird engraved on the lid, just as the maudra said. I didn’t bother looking inside before I brought it.”
Kylan did shut the box then. urLii tapped the drawing of the bird. His hand reminded Kylan of urVa’s, though where the Archer’s had been callused from nocking arrows, urLii’s were callused on the fingertips. From holding instruments for writing, etching and ink, Kylan thought, for they were the same hard spots he’d developed on his own hands.
“The singing mountain-gong,” the Mystic said. “In the golden years and long before. Every morning when the first sun rose, its song woke the world from the highest heights. Little Aughra and all the little Gelfling, creatures big and small. It was the good-morning from Thra, from the Heart, to all.”
“What happened to the birds?” Kylan asked. He wanted a story to ease him out of the harshness of the predicament. If he could imagine something—anything—maybe he could get past this.
“Died out . . . Died out after the Conjunction. Early on. They sipped from the well of the world, you know. Like flowers grow from the suns. They grew from the song of the Heart of Thra. When the song changed, even in the very beginning . . . Oh, such large and magnificent creatures cannot subsist on anything less than what gave them birth in the beginning. Old things cannot change quickly. These birds were very old, and the Conjunction very abrupt.”
“I feel like things are happening even more quickly now,” Kylan said. He set the box down before he succumbed to the urge to fling it across the room in frustration. “I feel like every time we try to accomplish something, we’re too late. The Skeksis are always one step ahead of us. Stealing my friends from Sami Thicket, and every other village. How can we hope to fight against them when they already know everything we plan to do? Are they using the Crystal to see beyond the castle? Maybe that’s why they haven’t bothered to come after us. There’s no need! They can tell that we’re no threat to them at all.”
Naia knelt beside him.
“Kylan, it will be fine. You couldn’t have known. You tried . . . We all did.”
She sounded disappointed but composed enough to set the feeling aside to encourage him. It didn’t matter. Encouragement was just another kind of story, and stories weren’t going to h
elp them right now. What had happened to the firca had already happened, and no amount of positive thinking would fix it.
“I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up,” Kylan said. “This was a foolish plan to begin with.”
He sighed and stood, putting the box back on the shelf. He was determined to leave this failure in the Tomb, where maybe it could wither away and die peacefully. No need to bring it with them.
“We’d better get going to Ha’rar, as Tavra wishes. We promised.”
Naia started to say something, but swallowed the words instead. No matter how it had come to this, they had indeed made a deal with the Silverling. Perhaps the All-Maudra’s daughter had been right all along.
“As you said, at least now we know,” Tavra said. Her voice was neutral, neither surprised nor disappointed. She didn’t even seem happy to be right. She just seemed tired, void of any emotion at all, except perhaps relief that they could finally move on.
“urLii, is there anything else from the Tomb we should bring with us to Ha’rar?” Amri asked. He had been quiet until now, respectful of the quickly passing storm of emotions. In fact, Kylan realized that everyone else seemed much more calm than he felt. Maybe he was the only one who had been so excited about the firca. Well, of course he was. The firca had been his chance to play a part, to do something that only he could do. Now that chance was gone, and they would go running back to the wings of the All-Maudra.
“No, it’s mostly junk,” urLii answered.
Amri rubbed his forehead.
“Right. I’ve heard there’s a passageway to the daylight from somewhere in the Tomb. Do you know where it is?”
“No. There was a rock slide higher up, and it became difficult to access from the outside. Gelfling may be able to squeeze through the rocks, though . . . But I don’t remember where it comes in. Maybe the main chamber? Or was it the west . . .”
It wasn’t a direction, but it was a start. Naia took a breath and let it out, putting her hands on her hips. Amri and Tavra were already taking their cues, picking halls that would lead them in opposite directions. urLii had gotten distracted by a scroll. When it was just Naia, Kylan, and the Mystic, Naia held Kylan’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Kylan, stay here if you need to. I know . . . this has been hard for you. Don’t worry. We’ll find another way, and it’s going to be fine.”
Then she took the third hall, and Kylan was left with a mumbling, possibly senile Mystic.
“Is that the fate of song tellers, then?” he asked aloud. “To go mad?”
“Hmm . . . I don’t know that story, so I couldn’t tell you the end of it. A Spriton, are you? A dream-stitcher?”
urLii turned so quickly, a cloud of dust blew up from the shelf nearby. He reached with his first arm, snatching a roll of cloth from one of the high shelves. In a single motion, he held the top scroll-rod and let the bottom drop. It was a Spriton tapestry, woven in the special way that Maudra Mera was known for. Kylan touched it, feeling the beginning of a dreamfast as he did. The dream was stitched into the threads, the simple vision of a field under an open blue sky. The wind smelled sweet with grass, and then it ended.
“That’s nice, but it doesn’t help. The firca is broken. I can’t dream-stitch it together. Seems I really can’t do much of anything.”
“That is your decision to make. One can choose either to be the weaver or the woven. The singer or the song. You know?”
urLii’s words reminded Kylan of urVa in their meandering abstractness. Hadn’t he wanted the Mystic’s wisdom only a short time ago? Now, stuck in another dead end with his hopes dashed to pieces, the words only frustrated him with their immaterial philosophy.
“No, I don’t know,” he said. “Maudra Mera only started to teach me dream-stitching because it was the only thing I could do. Then I ran away.”
His short-tempered reply did not offend the Mystic, or if it did, he didn’t show it. urLii stroked his mane in thought.
“Hmm. The only thing you could do . . . or a thing only you could do?”
The question surprised Kylan out of his mood. It was a simple turn of words, but it put things in a different light. Was that the real reason Maudra Mera had tried to teach him the ancient Spriton vliyaya?
Amri’s voice interrupted the thought. He had found something. Kylan floundered, unsure how to express himself to the Mystic and wanting desperately to be gone from the Tomb. urLii understood and waved him away with a hand.
“Go on, then, little song teller. Go on.”
“Thanks,” Kylan said, and hurried to meet his friends.
The exit Amri found was buried behind carved stones, pottery, and large rough gems. Behind the intentional-looking barricade was a door. urLii did not join them, and so on their own, the four Gelfling cleared the wall. Though Tavra and Naia took on the largest obstructions, Kylan lifted his fair share of the rocks, even while bearing the weight of the pack on his shoulders.
Tavra was the last one working after the other three had taken breaks. She hauled and shoved and moved the blockages tirelessly, neither sweating nor complaining. When the doorway was finally clear, she wasted no time turning the handle and carefully opening it, bracing with her body in case the remains of the rock slide urLii had described waited on the other side.
There was nothing on the other side of the door but a tunnel and a cold draft that smelled of the surface. Kylan had almost forgotten what open air smelled like, and despite the damp scent of dirt that accompanied it, the whiff of fresh air brought images of grass and sunlight and clouds to mind.
“Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Naia said from where she sat on one of the stones. “Can we rest a bit? Just a moment, then I promise we’ll go. That tunnel’s going to be a hike, and it might be dangerous. Let’s at least catch our breaths before we switch to hauling boulders in a tunnel that could collapse on us at any time.”
Tavra looked over her younger companions. Kylan was willing to go if the others insisted, but from the look on Amri’s face, he didn’t think they would. The soldier sucked in a big impatient breath, but leaned against the wall with her arms crossed. Amri chuckled.
“You’re tireless as a Landstrider,” he said. “Or, as tireless as I hear Landstriders are. As you can imagine, they don’t frequent the caves. Although that would be a funny sight.”
“Perhaps we’ll be lucky enough to see them above,” Naia said. “They’re amazing creatures. If we could call a few, we could probably reach Ha’rar faster than by river . . . We rode one from the Castle of the Crystal all the way to Stone-in-the-Wood in a single night. It would have taken days by foot.”
“Landstriders are the patron creature of the Spriton, are they not?” Amri asked. “Kylan, could you call them for us?”
Kylan shook his head. “They avoid the highlands. Their legs aren’t nimble enough for the rockies. If we ever return to the Dark Wood, or the plains, I will call them for you to meet.”
“Yes! And the Drenchen—I want to meet a muski, too. I should probably start a list.”
Naia sighed, her hand moving toward her shoulder where Neech was missing. She looked sad for a moment, then reassured. Neech was with Gurjin, helping him return to Sog. That was the best place he could be, in the circumstances.
“You will,” she said. “Someday.”
Amri stretched and leaned back. “Yes! I can’t wait. My people don’t keep hollerbats as familiars . . . They poop a lot.”
“What about you, Tavra?” Kylan asked. “Do the Vapra keep unamoths?”
Tavra took the question as a sign that they were well enough to move on. Like a statue coming to life, she stood away from the wall where she’d been leaning, uncrossing her arms to point into the tunnel with a stern finger. One by one, they rose to their feet and obeyed. Kylan paused, looking back into the Tomb and wondering whether they should say goodbye to urLii. Amri sho
ok his head and waved.
“He’ll be fine. He won’t even notice we’ve left.”
The tunnel was well supported in the beginning. Kylan thought he saw glimpses of sunlight coming from ahead, but he had no idea how deep in the mountain they were, or even what time of day—or night—it was. He guessed it was probably just his hopeful imagination. Amri led, followed by Naia and Kylan. Tavra kept to the rear, a few steps behind Kylan, as if to make sure no one snuck away from the party again.
In the close confines of the tunnel, Kylan heard Tavra muttering to herself.
“Unamoths are only good for one thing . . .”
It was quiet, under her breath, and he wasn’t sure if she knew he could hear her when she finished the thought:
“. . . eating.”
CHAPTER 20
The tunnel ended as urLii had said it would—in a wall of large rocks and earth. The cave-in had taken place some time ago, as evidenced by the bounty of plant life growing in the displaced dirt. Kylan was happy to find some of the flora was surface-dwelling—ferns and flowers that would never have survived without daylight. That meant they were close. Indeed, slivers of light peeked through the cracks in the rocks, and when he strained his ears, he thought he could hear birds.
Amri went first, most familiar with navigating through dangerous rocks. Even if the jumble of boulders had rested this way for a long time, the wrong pressure or even sound could jar them loose and crush them. They picked their way silently and delicately, weaving through the spaces between the rocks. There was no way urLii could have made it, and in some places Kylan thought even he might not be able to squeeze through. With some scrapes and a lot of patience, in time they finally stumbled out of the rubble.
It was early evening. Kylan dropped his traveling pack and fell to his knees on the grass-covered ledge. They were still in the highlands but below the tree line, and the green and gold sight of the wood-filled valley and open amber sky was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen. Naia knelt beside him, running her hands over the thick grass and leaning in to take a big breath of it.